Over the past year, stories have circulated in the Malian press about centuries old Jewish communities existing in isolated villages around Timbuktu. Through chance and mischance, I traced the source of these stories to Ismael Diadie Haidara, a historian from Timbuktu. Equipped with only his phone number, my brother and I arrived in Timbuktu on Thanksgiving morning to investigate the stories.
Ismael Haidara was not there, but we were welcomed and accommodated by his wife, Hawa Toure, who explained that her husband was currently working in Spain. She immediately put us into contact with two leading members of Zakhor; Oumar Maiga, an economist with USAID, and Aliou Toure, a school teacher. The three answered all our questions about the Jews of Timbuktu; their history, their community, and the Association that had been recently created to reunite them.
We were disappointed to learn that contrary to the rumors, there were no practicing Jews, only the Islamicized descendants of Jews, who had nonetheless maintained their identity over the centuries. (However, in a recent conversation with Ismael Haidara, I was told that this may not be the case, that rumors abound of older people practicing Jewish religious rites but in a great deal of secrecy, making research very difficult.) These descendants lived mostly in villages scattered along on the Niger river, the border to where the Sahara begins. They were land-owning farmers, potters, dyers and mat weavers. Use of the star of David as their symbol was also reported to us.
The historical evidence provided by Ismael Haidara for the people's claims of Jewish identity seemed plausible enough. The long history of a Jewish presence in Morocco and other parts of the Maghreb is well-known. Given the importance the of trans-Saharan trade route to the old North African economies, it is unlikely that Jewish traders would not have taken part, settling as other traders did along the way, intermarrying and leaving descendants.
However, stories of lost Jews are too bountiful to all be credible, and I was determined not to be easily convinced.
I wanted to ascertain how much of a Jewish identity really existed on the part of the villagers who lived with minimal contact to the outside world. Two villages were chosen, Kirshamba, the home of Ismael Haidara's family, and Tangasane, Aliou Toure's native village. Departure was set for the next day. We rented a motorized pinasse, which turned out be no more than a large and leaking canoe. Equipped with a barrel of gas, it was to take us the five hours up river to Tangasane and back.
The Boucle du Niger is a huge inland delta of flood plains crisscrossed by channels, rivers and lakes that converge just before Timbuktu. At times the river and surrounding land are so flat that the water seemed endless. Where the banks were visible, we could see villages and sand dunes tumbling into the river, and the temporary encampments of nomads built under the shadow of palm trees and tower-like termite mounds.
We arrived outside Tangasane at sunset, though it was dark by the time we finished finding a path for the boat through the grasschoked channels. We stumbled up the bank and through the dark lanes of the village; light coming only from the stars and the occasional kerosene lamp. The village was entirely without electricity, silent without the hum of even a single generator. We were taken to the house of Aliou's father, where much fuss was made of preparing beds and slaughtering a lamb. We made an attempt at eating, and caused much upset by our lack of appetite for the never-ending platters of organs and meat, followed by bowls of raw milk and butter. As we finished the men of the Tangasane's Jewish families filtered in; bearded, long robed patriarchs. The small room was soon filled and late-comers were obligated to gather by the door. My brother counted thirty people in all.
The discussion began with regret on our host's part that we had not contacted them prior to arrival, as they would have liked to have organized a far greater welcoming for us. We expressed our regret, but inwardly I wondered how they expected us to do that, given the lack of phones or mail service. I also gave a sigh of relief, their short-notice hospitality was already more than I could handle.
We started by asking the number and names of Jewish families in the village. We were told that there were around five hundred individuals in all, all bearing the last name of Toure, a common Songhai name. I then asked about the history of the village and its families, and was told that the village had been established by Jews, the descendants of Al-Kohani. This information had given to them by their fathers and grandfathers. I inquired as to whether or not anyone still practiced Judaism, and was met with an emphatic 'no'; they were all orthodox Muslims.
My next question was about what they desired from Zakhor, which may not have been the best way to phrase the question. An older man, Mohammadou Aliou Toure replied that as peasants they needed help in that domain, more specifically motor pumps, work tools, machines and fertilizers. I rephrased the question. A younger man, Ousmane Alimir Toure took a turn at replying. He spoke of their desire to know about their brothers in other places, and to let those brothers know of their existence. They also wanted to see their children go to school, and learn about their roots and history. Even they the adults wanted to learn more about their origins. Yet even by his answer, a large component of their interest was the desire to improve their situation. To begin to meet, as he put it, the most basic of their needs. Ousmane added that they weren't waiting for anybody to come help them, and that if their brothers in Israel were ever in need, that they would come right to their assistance. One final note, he added that he would very much like to go visit his brothers in Israel.
Some other men piped in about the difficulty of rice production, and the need for assistance. I tried to pull the conversation back to Judaism again, and so asked what they knew about Jews. Mohammed Alimir Toure, also known as Dramane, replied, "they were a people of long origin, descended from Ibrahim and Yakouba (Abraham and Jacob.) Yakouba had ten children from one father and mother, and two from another mother, one was named Yusuf and the other was named Benyamun. Together they were the long ago ancestors. These twelve originators of Banu-Israel multiplied in the world to make the Jewish people. It would take years to count them all." He explained that he had learned all this from the Koran. He had also learned about Moses, but other than what was in the Koran he did not know, but very much wanted to learn.
Mohammadou Alamir Toure wanted to know more about the problems between the Jews and the Arabs in Israel. I explained the religious reasons as written in the Bible, and the birth of the Zionist movement. I also spoke of the centuries of persecution in Europe that culminated in the Holocaust. There was silence in the room as I spoke, unbroken save for the soft exclamations of disbelief. I then told about the establishment of Israel after the war, and of the inevitable problems this brought.
Mohammed Toure digested all this, and then a moment later asked what he had wanted to know all along, "Was the division between Ismael and Isaac the cause of the division between the Arabs and the Jews?" I looked at the men surrounding me, bearded patriarchs whose lives differed little from those described in the Bible and the Koran, and therefore would be bound to understand it literally. My brother, tired and seemingly untouched by this fact, replied that it was like children who did not want to share something, which caused some laughter.
Given the repeated requests to learn more about Judaism, and not knowing when these people would have contact with other Jews again, I wanted to impart some information to them. In view of the need not to appear as if I was trying to convert, I told them that as Muslims they were respecting the single most important aspect of Judaism, the worship of one God and Creator, and that undoubtedly the Koran also instructed them to respect the Ten Commandments.
I then decided to speak of the importance of education in the Jewish tradition. This was due in part to information I had gathered from Aliou Toure during the boatride. A short-while before reaching Tangasane, Aliou had pointed out the village where he had gone to school. It was four kilometers away, a long walk with rivers to be crossed at both ends of the trip. However, the children of Tangasane no longer attended the school there. Besides the distance and inconvenience, a land dispute had broken out with the other village, and the parents of Tangasane did not trust the other village not to retaliate against their children. There was no school in Tangasane, so for several years the children were receiving only Koranic instruction, which consists of verbally memorizing the Koran. I was annoyed to learn from Aliou that the villagers were waiting for outside funding to build a school so that the government would send a teacher.
I explained that in the Jewish tradition, it was the responsibility of parents to assure that their children could read and write, and that it was unthinkable for them not to do so. This raised the inevitable requests for assistance to help them build a school. I inquired that if they were capable of building homes and mosques, why were they not capable of building a school'? I was told in return that the schools couldn't be built of mud bricks, to which I disagreed. We were unable to come to agreement on this point, and as it was late and we had endured a long, exhausting day, we brought the meeting to close. After many benedictions and blessings, the men filed out, extracting promises that we would come see their rice fields the next day. We assented and settled in for what turned out to be a sleepless night.
I awoke ill the next day, and my brother felt little better. Nonetheless we set out to greet the families of the five hundred Jews of Tangasane. The village by daylight was a dreary affair. The children were for the most part malnourished, unhealthy looking, and underdressed for the cold left by the desert night. Their skin was ashy, black only around their eyes and mouths which they had rubbed water, giving them the appearance of ghouls.
We went from one family's concession to another, stepping into homes where shy women stayed to protect their modesty. My brother took endless photos of extended families; of brothers and sisters, children, grandparents and second and third wives. Pens of sheep and goats accompanied every house. On the outskirts of town, Aliou pointed to a cluster of date palms situated on the slightest rise in the unbearable flatness; it was the children's graveyard.
Accompanied by a crowd of men in jewel-colored robes and flowing turbans, we proceeded to the rice fields. It was a long walk over fields of hardened mud, smooth from the receding river. Soon it would be planted with wheat. Rice growing along the inland delta had been a goal of administrators and developers for some time, with added impetus after the droughts of the early and mid 1980s. The colonial French government had established wide-spread rice cultivation, further south near Segou. However, only a portion of the available land in the Timbuktu region had been turned to rice cultivation. The fields of Tangasane showed initiative. A main canal split the fields. It had been dug by tractors and plows, but the multitude of smaller canals feeding off the main one had all been dug by hand. They were in immaculate shape, and the source of much pride. Work was under way to create new fields, in part to expand production, but also allowing old fields to rest. As we walked, Aliou explained that the main costs were fertilizers, paying to bring the equipment out to dig the main canal, the purchase of motor pumps, and gas to run the pumps. Where the canal met the river, a white fountain of water shot noisily into the blue sky, and arched to splash into the canal. The sound of the motor competed with that of the water, and with this din in our ears we received more blessings and benedictions, and set out again into the pinasse waiting to take us to Kirshamba.
An hour's travel back in the direction of Timbuktu brought us to Kirshamba. Even from a distance it was a more attractive village than Tangasane, perched on the river bank, and seemingly less isolated from the rest of the world.
We were taken along sandy paths that curled around handsome mud walls to the home of Ismael Haidara's grandparents. We were again chastised for not having warned them in advance of our arrival. We then further upset their sensibilities by imploring them not to slaughter a lamb for us. When enough apologies and explanations had been given, the members of Zakhor were fetched from home and field, so that within no more than an hour, the meeting was underway.
The group gathered about us was again all men, so I inquired as to whether or not there were any women members of Zakhor. Boubakar Khalidi, the accorded representative, emphatically stated that in Kirshamba, the women members outnumbered the men. I decide to let the issue rest there, and began noting the names of all those present. It did not take long to notice that they all had the last name of Djarumba, which I did not recognize as a Songhai name. I asked them about this and was told that it was the name of their ethnic group, that it meant the same as "Aliahoudou-hou," the Songhai word and derogation for Jews. They had this name because of their Jewish origins. The President of the Kirshamba chapter of Zakhor, explained that they all knew from the oral tradition that they were descended from the people of Israel, but that the milieu did not like their culture.
I further asked if they knew anything about Jews and Judaism, besides that which was written in the Koran. There was a general agreement to the answer of no, though someone added that the Jews were a persecuted people, and that they were "seekers," though of what he did not specify.
I asked why they had joined Zakhor, and was told that it was because of their origins as Jews, that it would reunite them with their brothers. As for what they wanted to do as part of Zakhor, Yussuf Bokar Djarumba, replied that their priorities were health, education and work materials for rice cultivation. As in Tangasane, I had to rephrase the question to specify what they hoped as to their Jewish identity. Yusuf replied, that objectively, they knew their origins, and they knew the history of how their family came to Mali. What they desired was education so as to better identify and better know themselves, as well as wanting to learn Hebrew.
Pressed to return to Timbuktu, we brought the meeting to an early close. Amid the many inevitable benedictions and wishes for more contact with American Jews, one of the older men said, "It had been a longtime that they had been here, without knowing that they had brothers elsewhere, and as such to meet us was quite an occasion."
After seeing the school and health center, we shook numerous hands and began to board the pinasse. But our departure was delayed by the frantic calls of a figure jogging forward with a platter of rice and meat to be eaten before we could leave. We squatted on the beach to eat under the approving eyes of a crowd of people. Then finally we boarded the boat to return to Timbuktu, exhausted, and blinded by the glare of the African sun blazing in the neverending blue sky and blue waves on what the ancients called "the River of Rivers," and marked on their maps as the end of the world.